Charles surrendered to the Scottish marshal Leven, hoping to turn him against Parliament. Instead the Scots traded him to his enemies. In June 1647, the king twice negotiated with the parliamentary commanders, including Cromwell, who allowed him to meet his two imprisoned children, Elizabeth and Henry, duke of Gloucester: ‘the tenderest sight that ever eyes beheld’, in Cromwell’s view. Little Gloucester, not yet seven, did not recognize the king. ‘I am your father, child,’ Charles said.
Parliament was now dominated by diehard puritans who that June abolished all theatre, as well as Christmas and Easter, but moderate Presbyterians still hoped for a negotiated peace. In August, the army put an end to any talk of compromise. Fairfax rode into London at the head of the New Model Army with Cromwell commanding the rearguard. Their army was growing increasingly radical: some officers proposed a written constitution, universal rights, the abolition of the House of Lords and full male suffrage. Cromwell, socially conservative and monarchical by instinct, was appalled by this, but probably approved the military purge of Parliament that followed. While Fairfax was still lord general, the more political Cromwell became a master of inscrutable withdrawals and ever more ostentatious self-deprecation, yet always emerged with greater power. At times of tension, debates in Parliament or the army council, he would burst into manic laughter or start pillow fights. From now, he and his coterie of generals were the potentates. But what to do with the king?
The English meltdown was a tiny skirmish compared to the bedlam that was destroying the world’s largest kingdom. Charles was a desperate prisoner, but far to the east the Ming emperor, facing peasant revolts, famines and the invasion of the ferocious Manchu cavalry, found a uniquely extreme solution.
KILLING KINGS: BADGERS AND HETMANS, SUGAR CUBES AND BOWSTRINGS
On 25 April 1644, the Chongzhen Emperor, just thirty-three years old, after summoning his wife and daughter, killed both with his sword and then walked alone out to Jingshan Park in Beijing where he hanged himself on a tree, leaving a note that read: ‘I die ashamed, unable to face my ancestors.’* As Beijing was ravaged by rebels, he had lost control of much of China and faced the advance of the Manchus from the north. Beijing descended into chaos until six weeks later, on 5 June, a Manchu warrior, wearing armour, his hair with the front shaven and a queue behind, rode up with a small escort of horse archers, dismounted and announced to the crowds simply, ‘I am the prince regent, Dorgan. The crown prince will arrive presently. Will you allow me to be the ruler?’
‘Yes,’ replied the citizens. Dorgon (whose name meant the Badger) was soon joined by a horde of horse archers; a boy, Shunzhi, Dorgon’s six-year-old nephew and grandson of the family founder Nurhaci, was now emperor of a new Qing dynasty. The talented Badger, formally styled Uncle and Prince Regent, conquered the rest of China, slaughtering entire cities. Then he forged a new order: he settled the elite corps – the Eight Banners – in Beijing, yet reinstated the civil service exams and promoted Han Chinese scholars, asking, ‘How can the Manchu and Han be united?’ Nonetheless Dorgon murdered all the Ming princes and ordered that all Chinese men wear their hair shaved at the front with a queue at the back or be put to death.*
The boy emperor resented his uncle, whom he had assassinated during a hunt, but Dorgon had by then won a new Mandate of Heaven; the family would now restore the Central Country as the greatest empire on earth – just as the Habsburg world empire was falling apart.
Philip IV’s war had almost shattered both Habsburg Monarchies. France defeated the Austrians, then invaded Spain. The Portuguese had lost much of their empire to the Dutch and blamed the Habsburgs; in 1640, an assembly declared the duke of Braganza, great-grandson of Manuel the Fortunate, as João IV. The Swedes took Prague. The Planet King consulted a charismatic nun who, mystically transported to the Jumanos indigenous people of Texas, advised him to rule in his own right. He sacked Olivares and prepared to negotiate.
All sides were stalemated and exhausted. In October 1648 at Westphalia, Philip and his Austrian cousin Kaiser Frederick III agreed a compromise end to what became known as the Thirty Years War that recognized the right of Germans to worship as they wished. Germany was by then ruined: in thirty years of war, the horses of the apocalypse had killed around ten million people. Westphalia established the sovereignty of states in a multipolar Europe, ensuring creative freedom – and destructive competition – for centuries to come. There were many losers but three winners: Sweden ruled the Baltic and a slice of Germany, Pomerania; the Dutch won independence; and an obscure old Swabian family.
